Skip to content

Blues veteran Kal David learns some lessons, passes them on

5378kal-lauribono

WHITE ROCK — Johnson Road's Blue Frog Studios has been a hotbed for cool blues bands in recent years, but among all of the veterans of the American-born music who have played White Rock's most popular concert venue, few have instructional DVDs in their name.

Until now, that is.

American blues guitarist Kal David, who's played alongside artists such as B.B. King, Etta James and Johnny Rivers (just to name a few), is performing four shows at Blue Frogover the weekend, along with his wife, singer Miss Lauri Bono, for two days of heartachingly-good blues.

The "grand master" - as former colleague John Mayall has hailed him - has taken his previous experiences and packaged them upfor future generations to learn.

"I've been a musician for many, many years," David told the Now, "but what happened was that I became interested in giving it back, passing it on."

After teaching afternoon lessons at a club and subsequently encouraging his students to come and jam with him in the evenings, the guitarist, 71, began teaching a national guitar workshop based at six different campuses, including in Connecticut, Los Angeles, Chicago and Austin.

"As a result of that experience, I put together what is called the Kal David Blues Guitar Master Class DVD Series," David said.

"It's a long name but it pretty much explains what it is," he added with a chuckle.

David maintains he's still wholeheartedly a performer, but his years of experience playing with "the greats" have taught him that he's here to educate, too.

"All the tricks I've learned all these years from other great people that I learned from, I just wanted to pass that along," he said, noting that people from all over America - and the world - are studying his DVD series, many of whom write to him saying how valuable the lessons are.

"I found that one of the biggest lessons that I learned, and I tell my students, often the spaces between the notes are as important as the notes themselves," he said emphatically.

The husband-wife duo perform at 7 and 9:30 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 19 and at 7 and 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 20.

Tickets are $35 at Bluefrogstudios.ca.

kalexandra@thenownewspaper.com